


Your throat in one hand, your heart in the other

by ajarofgoodthings



Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Incest, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 07:59:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2500466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ajarofgoodthings/pseuds/ajarofgoodthings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's always been damned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your throat in one hand, your heart in the other

Hayley is in love with the Mikaelsons.

It's ridiculous; it's totally, completely and entirely absurd - her level of intimacy issues should make it impossible to love _one_ person, to let one person in - and here she is, wanting all three of them; totally and completely _needing_ all three of them. It's an awful feeling, the desperation to be around them - she's always rolled her eyes at couples in the street, clinging to each other like lifelines. It's gross, and annoying, and it's even more gross and annoying now that she gets it. She just wants to be around them; and it hits her at the oddest moments - alone, of course, in the middle of the night when she's sad and feels empty - but it comes in the middle of the day, too. Without reason, without any sort of prompting, she just aches.

She feels differently about all of them, of course. They're different people; trying to love them in the same way would be as outrageous as trying to make them behave in the same way. Her affection for Klaus is dark, buried in the bottom of her heart, pounding loudly through her system with each beat. He was the first one she loved; she thought Elijah was, originally - she thought he was the one she really wanted, and Klaus was just a mistake, but the more she was with them the more she realized how integrally Klaus had become a part of her, worked his way into her veins; he's an addiction. Maybe it has something to do with being parents together; with the utterly mundane middle of the night feedings, and Hope's first bath, and the number of times she's walked into the nursery to find him half asleep, leaning up against the crib, fingers resting against her chest like he's trying to make sure she's still breathing. He's fucked up, to put it shortly; and she knows this - he's a mass murderer, though the concept of murder has become so twisted and abstract to her in her familiarity with it. The concept of _him_ has become abstract in their familiarity - the smirk that originally sparked nothing but annoyance is something she looks for, nowadays. Something she wants to see, something she wants to be the reason for. He's a villain; he's the big bad the good guys defeat at the end of the fairytale, but the hands with all the blood on them are warm on the back of her neck, her ribcage, her thighs, and cradle Hope's head like she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. She probably is, and it makes Hayley love him all that much more.

Elijah is a noble sort of love; it's the one she read about in fairytales when she was young and wanted nothing more than to be saved - from the world, from herself - but refused to admit it. She still refuses to admit it, but she sits on the end of his bed and watches him fix his cuffs, straighten his jacket and tighten his tie, and thinks that Prada looks a lot like armour. He offers her his arm, tucks her fingers in the crook of his elbow - ever the Prince, ever the gentleman - and smiles at her like she's all he's ever needed. She knows that's absurd, too; not to mention self-obsessed and conceited, but it's how he makes her _feel_ , and the tongue that's offered a millennia of threats, lathed over open veins, teeth that have torn bodies apart, string words together to tell her she's beautiful. To tell her she's wonderful, exquisite - and mutter plenty of dirty things into her skin, the column of her neck, her inner thigh. He dances with her in the dark - teaches her steps lost to the rest of the world, teeth white and dangerous in the moonlight when he grins at her. It's cliche, of course; Elijah's a walking cliche, she's sure - but cliches are cliche for a reason, and Hayley accepts her susceptibility to this facet of humanity with a certain fervor, all the while aware that it's a man as far from humanity as one can get that's forced it upon her.

Rebekah is the sort of puppy love crush she remembers from highschool; only tenfold. Rebekah is bright laughter and bad decisions, sitting on the roof in the middle of the night and walking hand in hand through the quarter in the middle of the morning. Hayley's never had many women in her life; certainly not many who were her friends - but, when she thinks about it, she has to admit to herself that they were never really friends. They went from zero to ten to a hundred; hatred, to truce, to naked, Rebekah kissing her like she meant it and taunting; _you can be louder than that_. The sex is the other part that reminds her of highschool; Rebekah's worse than she remembers any fifteen year old boys ever being, and every time Hayley's trying to catch her breath with the blonde already running lips Hayley's seen covered in blood along the inside of her thigh, she laughs and then sighs, thankful for supernatural abilities and the fact that the other can't actually kill her. It's instantaneous, the way the sexual tension snaps - the immediate shift from innocent to dark. It's Rebekah, essentially; the way she shifts between easy smiles and laughter and something broken, residual traumas that wake her up in the middle of the night, have her hyperventilating and her voice cracking with pain Hayley's not sure she'll ever be able to understand.

She considers it constantly; contemplating the complications of her circumstances. It's not easy to love all three of them; not with the damage they've inflicted on each other, on the world, on themselves, and on her. She's not unaware of any of it - and it scares her, sometimes, how she wants them anyway. How the only person she's sure she loves more than any of them is Hope, and how she knows they all feel the same. It's wrong; on a human level, when she sees Elijah kiss Rebekah quiet, when she passes Klaus' room and hears the break of a vase, furniture slamming into a wall and telling her Klaus and Elijah are settling another argument in the best way they know - but they're _not_ human, and she can't fault them for loving each other as much as she loves them. Probably even more, she knows, because she's not sure she'll ever understand the thread of blood that holds them all together.

It's why she smiles as she watches them; out on the dance floor, finally _enjoying_ themselves without the crippling fear of imminent war. Or, at least, a lessened version of it. They're out tonight; Davina's gracious offer to babysit and not so gracious demand that they go out, for once; for the first time in months bringing them here, to the bar soaked in blood. Not literally, of course; not tonight - there's a live band, and Hayley thinks they're actually pretty good, fingers tapping against her glass to the beat as she watches Klaus and Elijah dance with Rebekah between them, something still undeniably elegant about the way they grind together, Elijah's hands on Rebekah's hips, one covered by Klaus' while Klaus holds the other at the back of Elijah's neck, his own covered by Rebekah's. They're tangled together, and Hayley's not sure there's any way to love them that _isn't_ together.

"Oh, my friend," Marcel breaks into her consideration of the three, sitting down next to her and grinning as he looks between her and them. "You are so fucked," he informs her, blunt, like it's a fact, and Hayley smiles, shrugs, and drains the rest of her drink.

"I've always been damned, Marcel," she says, because it _is_ a fact; even more so now she's a hybrid, truly a creature from Hell. "I'm not sure I mind it so much anymore," she adds, slips off her chair, raises an eyebrow at him, expectant until he laughs, offers his own shrug.

"They've always said dancing is the Devil's work," he says, standing.

Hayley's never believed in God; she's never really believed in anything, but the way they look at her as Marcel turns her out in a spin- a dance far too elegant for the environment - predatory, protective and powerful; it feels a little like faith.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd - and assumptions that the current big bads have been dealt with and Rebekah's come home with Hope in tow would be accurate.
> 
> Comments appreciated! Xx


End file.
